every Cinderella has her midnight
by ten.years.only.with.you
Summary: Love has been anything but all too rare, she reckons. emma/neal, emma/august, emma/graham, emma/killian


every Cinderella has her midnight.

x

[neal]

Still years later she finds herself blushing under the gaze of his eyes. The easy way that his laugh lines scrunch up into his forehead, how his smile cracks his entire face rendering her without words. He grins at her in the late sunlight and it hits his face in such a way that she remembers why she fell in love with him, hell why part of her is still in love with him.

Fingering the chain around her neck worn with age, the engraving fading into the metal from her rubbing the pads of her fingertips over the words. He makes some snarky comment, the part of him that challenged her bubbling up and she rolls her eyes and swears that if you squint they are baby faced and fresh thieves as when they were younger, carefree, _immortal._

Loving him was the worst thing she could've done, leaving red lipstick stains on his eternal five o'clock shadow, lacing his hands in her tangled mess of a ponytail, feeling his warm breath on her cheek. Chasing and running and following for the first time in her life and then it all dropped out from underneath and she was pregnant and in prison and alone.

But good God almighty, the way that he still makes her heart stammer in her chest, when he cried when her, _their_ son (she's still struggling with the way that sounds in her mouth) took that rucksack and fled to the woods, how he flew to her rescue because it was engrained in his soul, and his voice to protect her even now. After everything else that has shredded to pieces and he loves another woman or so she thinks he wants to in the way that he desperately tries to look at the other woman with the almond eyes and ebony skin and sometimes she selfishly prays into the dark abyss of her bedroom when everyone else is asleep that she really might have [definitely] wanted that happy ending with him and Tallahassee.

So she sings it into her pillow sham and lightly fingers the timed out key chain, glances at the moonlight dancing through the pores of the dream catcher and recalls when she was young and in love and had the world at her doorstep. He calls it fate, destiny waving his hands in the air and trying not to memorize the color of her eyes and yet, she lets him.

[henry]

He doesn't have her eyes, her son's eyes are those of his father : completely mischievous and bright and brilliant like he is ready to take on the world and not even the least bit afraid of it. When he shows up at her door and states the cold hard facts, part of her wants to just run as fast as she can and the other part, well you know the story. Literally.

They are so alike in some ways, how he hunkers down at Granny's with his homework and his hot chocolate with a dash of cinnamon reading through and highlighting what needs notation meticulously so attempting to figure something out. How he throws himself into a situation, never coming up for air and going on the churning living in his gut. But he is also his father's son and goes in blindly and recklessly, loving without regard nor concern. He runs and doesn't stop, won't stop.

Loving him is sincerely simple because she has been doing it since she let go of his fragile fingers eleven years ago. He makes her believe, makes her better like the role model that she had always wanted to be when she was just a little girl stealing cars and running around with the flounce of her skirt in the breeze. Just wants her to be Mom, thinks that she can do anything, can be anyone. His faith in her is terrifyingly fantastic. She wants to live up to his expectations.

More often than not, he teaches her, brings out new sides that she had kept hidden long away that were never meant to be found. She is the product of true love and so is her son, not that she is ever going to tell him that but she is pretty sure there are days when he already knows more than she has ever had to tell him.

[graham]

The way he looks at her she hasn't seen since the likes of eighteen and stolen watches and raiding hotel minibars and it makes her heart flutter in its cage and she absolutely hates him for it. Like how he shyly ducks his head in a way that makes his eyes seem more genuine and innocent and staring at her with no other omission except that she is worthy of being stared at. How he teases her, runs a tanned calloused finger along the bridge of her nose and taps it with lithe force and chuckles under his breath as she huffs and storms out. All the makings of something she knew she could and would never need again, doesn't want to need ever again.

But, his shirt is unbuttoned halfway and he makes a quip and shakes a jacket in her eyeline, smiling and he is just so beautiful that it makes her angry that he wants her to see him. How he holds her face in his hands, cradling her chin like she is precious and worthwhile and needs to be touched like this, like she is the world. How much she hates him for that.

Because he dies, quickly like a flash of lightning in her arms, with his taste lingering in her mouth, his beard rubbed reddened on her cheeks, the light pressure of his lips on hers and his body lifeless in her lap, the caramel curls raking an uneven rhythm as she shakes and shakes him, no heartbeat. She cries great big heaving sobs, pulls her fingernails through his scruff and holds him like he held her. Precious, lovely, and worthwhile.

[august]

He kind of reminds her of the Sheriff and for a breath of an instant her words catch in her mouth, strangled for the memory of Graham and caramel curls and navy blue button ups, cranberry colored ties loosely knotted at the fold. But August is not Graham. A perpetual shade shelters his face, hiding the razor sharp smirk that untellingly turns wrought when he laughs at her blonde hair flying out a wild curtain behind her shoulders. Stormy blue eyes troubled with years of experience that she can tell he will probably not share, and she is more than okay with that. And an unmistakable black leather coat that he shrugs on so easily as a second skin.

His words are measured and calculated like his allowance on them can be easily run dry. His fingers run over an aged typewriter, click clacking like a machine gun with force attempting to get out the phrases and founts that need, must be on the parchment. Slide and cling. Another finished thought, she considers wiping the cream off her upper lip and seeing him slowly grin at her out the corner of her eye.

Extending a hand, all five fingers grasping the cold Maine air and then quick to warm when they find her own, she climbs on back his motorcycle and every fiber of her screams at her eighteen year old soul because she is _so_ not this girl anymore, but he feels like a spinning top that just doesn't stop, keeps on whirling dervish in sloppy figure eights, carving infinity symbols into the wood of a grain table. A puzzle to be sure, she reckons and he chuckles the sound deep and smooth like hot coffee on a freezing day.

To be fair, she doesn't take his outbursts well, doesn't agree with the facts that they once shared a crib, had already intertwined fingers and felt each others' fanning breath on collarbone long before they even touched into this realm with _the orphanage and stolen cars and damnit all, Neal too._ Carrying on and making a fuss is out of character for them both, she can side eye how he stands uncomfortable, limbs locked up and legs tense, his short hair unkempt and eyes rimmed in sleepy circles of charcoal.

It's your destiny, he shouts. She breaks because he's concise and tallied and has not _ever_ said anything that didn't hang in the balance of some book page like it was scripted to be there. So she runs and he hardens, and yet again, struggles to keep up. With the evergreen branches overhead and the ground mucky cocoa beneath her feet and no other sounds to make her go, she wonders whether or not that baby in the blanket ever really felt safe in the arms of a sweet seven year old boy. Because as she is now, with all her years and age and_ life_, she for once, maybe could have.

[charming]

Emma always wanted a dad. He would be a hero, a king, someone that she could look at and be amazed by. A man that would never run away or betray trust or lie. Her father, her real father, turned out to be all of these things as well as the opposite. Charming, as in Prince, left her in a wardrobe without a second thought. Charming would run from danger that he didn't understand, angered her mother, lied to her face about things that she didn't know. He was a coward and a phony and the kind of man that she had always dreamed would end up being the father of a blue eyed girl with wheat waves that lived in a Boston nursery. She was no princess and her father no king.

Charming was gallant and true. He saved her life, died fighting for her safety. It is the part of the story that he never tells her, the part that she reads in Henry's storybook. The part where her father flushes red and spills coffee on his morning newspaper. Charming was steadfastly loyal. He destroyed a kingdom, brought down a world all in the namesake of his wife, defeated every army and every battalion in the realm only to be told that I can do it myself you know, darling. And all he did was laugh and smile because his wife, his Snow was what he needed. And the same went for his baby girl. Perfect in her every radiant beam that he only held for two minutes, the last thing he saw before he was killed, the only thing he could've imagined dying for and living for. Now the only thing he lives for.

So yes, she had, has a father. And he was, is a hero and a king. Sometimes fairytales are real.

[killian]

That smile is in-fur-i-at-ing.

It shouldn't be that possible for a man to look that ridiculously attractive and be that much of a smarmy asshole. But this is the other realm, the one that she has heard so much about, and here two feet in front of her is a man with a metal hook snapped to one arm and he's got this shit eating grin even though he is tied to a tree with no visible release in sight.

He's witty, cunning, spins his words and phrases without so much measurement as August had done but the desired affect lands with more weight. He counts on his charm to get him out of trouble, she can see that flint of a burning spark in his eyes, how the grins hooks (she laughs to herself) so simply on his jaw in a way that he knows drives every woman in each realm mad. She thinks how if they were in the real world with her car and her badge and her authority that she might even not write a ticket for any and all causes because of the way he looks at her.

Hook—Killian—she thinks absentmindedly trying to avoid his questions and the way that his ringed fingers wrap around hers without much thought, like they were not on uncommon ground. How they share the same mannerisms and personality traits, how high that wall is around his heart, she can tell the moment she snaps the metal upon his wrist, the sadness in his eyes because this is what happens when you try to trust, try to care. She has no more time nor patience for it and his one line wonders about truths she didn't feel like listening to ring in her ears all the way home.

How she wishes sometimes that he were actually a monster and not a man. A man that makes her smile go all the way up to her eyes, crinkle in the corners and think that maybe those modern day fairytales might not be so worthless. How he rolls his own slate grey orbs in unison with hers and then hides his grin, dear lord, how gorgeous it is when he smiles at her. The way that she always imagined a man should smile at a woman that he could love, could care for, could climb over the walls and rescue the princess.

But she is no princess and he is no suitor for a girl like her. A girl with generations of kings and queens at her liege, a royal heir with a throne for the taking. He's a rogue, rapscallion of a pirate with borrowed gold in his hands and a sword in his side. She laughs because it's the oldest story. Princess being taken away, stolen really, by a man that makes her feel vivid, in color. Alive.

x

And then the clock strikes twelve.


End file.
